Optimizing Life Success Through Residential Immersive Life Skills (RILS) Programs for Youth With Disabilities

March 10, 2022 updated by: Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital

Optimizing Life Success Through Residential Immersive Life Skills Programs for Youth With Disabilities

In Canada, between 3.6% and 7.7% of children under 19 years old are thought to have a chronic health condition that results in disability or limits to activity. These young people have difficulty finding jobs, attending school, living independently, and forming relationships with other people. These poorer life outcomes are partly the result of a lack of life skills. Life skills include the ability to solve problems and set goals, which allows youth to deal with the demands of everyday life. Several children's treatment centres in Ontario offer short-term residential immersive life skills (RILS) programs to provide youth with these life skills to help them take on adult roles. RILS programs are very promising in terms of making a long-term difference in youths' lives because they provide a place where youth can learn by doing, working with peers and taking risks in a safe environment. However, we do not yet know how well skills that are learned in RILS programs are kept up as time passes or how well RILS programs support broader skills, such as the ability to make one's own choices.

The proposed research will examine these issues and will ask the following questions:

  1. What opportunities are youth given when they participate in RILS programs? What specific strategies do RILS service providers use to support youth in learning life skills?;
  2. How do youth experience and perceive their participation in a RILS program, before, during and after they take part? What do their parents expect and experience in terms of their child's participation?; and
  3. What changes do youth experience, particularly in terms of their ability to make choices for themselves and their sense of being able to cope with things that come up in their lives? The study will involve youth from several treatment centres in Ontario over the next three years.

Youth who are attending RILS programs will be compared with:

  1. youth who are similar to the RILS youth, but who are taking part in a life skills program that is not residential;
  2. youth who applied to a RILS program and were accepted, but who will take part in the program in a different year; and
  3. a group of youth who are similar to the RILS youth but who are not taking part in any life skills program.

Youth will provide data at four time points: before the program starts, immediately after the program finishes, three months after the program is over and 12 months after the program is over.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

29

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Canada
    • Ontario
      • Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4G 1R8
        • Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

14 years to 21 years (Child, Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • All youth must be between 14 and 21 years of age, have a child-onset disability, be able to set goals for themselves, and speak English.
  • Parents who are enrolled must speak English.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Youth with severe behavioral issues will be excluded, since these would restrict the youth's ability to participate in a group learning experience.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Other
  • Allocation: Non-Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: Residential Immersive Life Skills group
Youth will take part in a residential life skills program of between one and three weeks, consisting of formal workshops, peer learning, outings in the community, one-on-one coaching and daily living tasks carried out with peers (e.g. cooking, laundry, grocery shopping).
Behavioral: Residential Immersive Life Skills programming
Active Comparator: Non-residential life skills program
Youth will take part in programs focusing on increasing specific life skills, but taking place only during the day (i.e. non- residential).
Behavioral: Non-residential life skills programming
No Intervention: Deferred RILS applicants
Youth who applied to a Residential Immersive Life Skills program but are deferred to a subsequent year. These youth are included as a comparator group to match the motivation level required to apply to a RILS program.
No Intervention: No life skills program
Youth who did not apply or take part in any group life skills program. These youth provide a diagnosis and age matched comparator group.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
Change in Arc's Self-Determination Scale scores
Time Frame: Baseline, 1 week post intervention, 3 months post intervention, 12 months post intervention
Baseline, 1 week post intervention, 3 months post intervention, 12 months post intervention

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
Change in General Self-Efficacy Scale scores
Time Frame: Baseline, 1 week post intervention, 3 months post intervention, 12 months post intervention
Baseline, 1 week post intervention, 3 months post intervention, 12 months post intervention

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital

Collaborators

McMaster Children's Hospital
ErinoakKids Centre for Treatment and Development

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Gillian King, PhD, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital
  • Principal Investigator: Amy C McPherson, PhD, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

May 1, 2015

Primary Completion (Actual)

March 31, 2021

Study Completion (Actual)

March 31, 2021

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

April 8, 2016

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 26, 2016

First Posted (Estimate)

April 27, 2016

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

March 11, 2022

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 10, 2022

Last Verified

March 1, 2022

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • SSHRC-435-2014-0654
  • 14-506 (Other Identifier: Holland Bloorview Research Ethics Board)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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